Does everyone at your company respond to change as fast as your agile team?
Or do you have critical partners who simply can't move as fast as your team? Are you required to provide detailed estimates in order to get enough resources to start uncertain and complex projects? How do you even build enough buy-in to avoid death by a thousand cuts? In this presentation, Nancy Van Schooenderwoert will explore practical, proven ways to address these questions.

Who should attend: Anyone trying to build enough buy-in for their company to give Agile methods a genuine try. Embedded systems developers and project leaders who need to envision the concrete workings of Agile practices in their domain, as a first step to making it happen.

Speaker: Nancy Van Schooenderwoert is an Agile Enterprise coach with over a decade of experience applying Agile practices as an engineer, manager, and consultant. She has led Agile change initiatives in safety-critical, highly regulated industries, and coached clients in the art of Agile technical and management leadership. Nancy's experience spans embedded software development and applications in aerospace, factory automation, medical devices, defense systems, as well as in financial services. In 1998 Nancy introduced agile techniques to embedded software, including safety- critical applications. She was among the first to publish advice on the techniques that work in real world embedded projects. She has introduced agile ideas and practices to another field where it was thought to be impossible – data warehousing and large data migrations. Coaches she mentored are now the leaders in this new field applying lean-agile principles to applications where data quality is central. Nancy Van Schooenderwoert is Principal Coach at Lean-Agile Partners Inc. www.LeanAgilePartners.com

Pizza sponsored by PNSQC starts at 6:30 p.m. Program starts at 7:00 p.m.

The Hawthorne Farm MAX station stops right next to Intel. See this map for the correct location:

Directions: From Cornell, head South on NE Elam Young Pkwy (near Costco). Take the first left to turn into the Intel parking lot. The HF3 campus will be directly in front of you. Parking is available on both sides of the building. Note: There are two NE Elam Young Pkwy streets that connect with Cornell. Go south on the street closest to Brookwood and Costco (between Brookwood and 51st).

Maximum Coverage with a Minimum of Data: How Equivalence Classes can be used to narrow down the amount of data needed for analysis

In Quality Assurance, an Equivalence Class is the set of all inputs that can be seen as interchangeable with one another without impacting the results of the test, where only one of them needs to be tested in order to have confidence in the test results. Automation can certainly help facilitate running all scenarios, but it isn't always possible or practical to create a completely automated test suite. This lunch time presentation is ideal for the QA Engineer who is trying create a data set and complimentary set of test cases that accurately validates the code without having to run through a seemingly endless matrix of possibilities.

When making an analysis of the behavior of a system that is based on a large set of data, you have basically three options presented: Full data-set analysis, Analysis of a randomly sampled subset of the data, or Selection of a subset of data based on Equivalence Class Elimination.

In this presentation we will talk about the pro's and con's of each approach, and then focus on how to proceed with the Equivalence Class methodology in greater detail. Please join us for this informative and interactive discussion followed by a Q&A session.

QA has seen so much happen in the last 5 years, from mobile, to cloud, to social media and beyond - challenging every company to do things faster and still maintain high quality. The question on the table is: Where does QA go from here? We’ve been hearing from our members that they would like a discussion about the future of Quality Assurance, Testing methodologies, and the impact it may have on our career paths. This is highlighted by the need to define the role of QA on an Agile team, which may differ from the classic "career QA” path.

We have assembled a panel of thought leaders representing the academic, business, and practitioner view to discuss and clarify the future path of QA . We hope you can join us for this interactive lunch event!

IMPORTANT: Space is limited to 150 participants, so please register to reserve a spot. The event is free, but a donation is suggested.

CITCON, the Continuous Integration and Testing Conference, is a world-wide series of free Open Spaces events for developer-testers, tester-developers and anyone else with an interest in Continuous Integration and the type of Testing that goes along with it.

CITCON provides a forum to connect with other people on topics you care about, to learn from their experience and share your own. Past topics include:

Both Matt and Peter are in Portland for PNSQC. Matt will be a keynote speaker at the event, as well as conducting a full day workshop. Peter will be presenting on Having User Experience Drive Testing. For our event they will be discussing the complete package of testing where they will provide pointers for:

 Explaining testing

 Setting expectations

 Risk management

 Doing more with less

Event Details:

 Onsite parking in front or on the side of Con-way. Please come into the front entrance, and sign in at the reception desk.

 Pizza and beverages will be served

 Event is FREE to the public and NO RSVP is required to attend

Matt Heusser

Software Process Naturalist, Excelon Development
Matt Heusser has been developing, testing, and managing software projects for his entire adult life. A Consulting Software Tester and also contributing editor for ST&QA magazine, Matt was the initial organizer of the Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference. In 2008 Matt served as lead organizer for the Agile-Alliance Sponsored workshop on Technical Debt. Matt contributes to the STP Community Blog, and his personal blog, "Creative Chaos", is consistently highly ranked among testing blogs. After contributing a chapter to "Beautiful Testing", by O'Reilly, and finishing up a two-year stint as a part-time instructor in Information Systems at Calvin College, Matt recently served as Lead Editor for "How to Reduce the Cost of Software Testing" (Taylor and Francis, 2011). He is also a frequent presenter at software quality conferences.

Pete Walen

Quality Assurance Engineer, ACI Worldwide
Peter Walen has been in software development for over 25 years. After working many years as a programmer, he moved to software testing and QA. Following a brief foray in Project Management and Business Analysis, he returned to software testing. He has worked in the fields of insurance and
finance, manufacturing, higher education/universities, retail, distribution and point of sale systems. Peter is an active member of several testing associations, an active blogger on software testing, and presents at software quality conferences around the world.

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are BRAND NEW, and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

As our organizations move toward "Agile” for developing software, we all face the challenge of understanding how to adapt our former roles and ways of working to new work roles and processes.
How do we ensure the continued value of testing?

Join us in Open Space to share your questions, challenges, strategies, success stories, and how you've overcome stumbling blocks.

In small groups, we’ll discuss topics such as:

· How is Agile testing different from how we’ve always done it?
· How do we know what to test?
· How do we know what not to test?
· On Agile teams, when does testing happen and whose job is it?
· What is Exploratory Testing and why should we care?
· How do regression tests work?
· How does testing improve my design? Should it?
· How do we ensure it is cost effective?
· What do people mean when they say, "no defects”?
· Does Agile change how we test or does it just raise the existing issues?

Bring the topics you feel passion for and add them to the list!

Each self-organizing discussion group will create a document or other record of their discussion, ideas, questions, and insights. We’ll share everyone’s experiences at the end of the day.

Who should attend?

· Testers facing an Agile adoption/People new to the testing role/Testers eager to jump in
· Devs who want to get serious about defect-free code
· CTOs and Managers of Test/Validation, Dev, Application Delivery
· Academics preparing new software/IT professionals for the real world

Cost to attend: $75 per person (Register early. We expect to sell out.)

As mobile web usage has exploded over the past few years, Responsive Web Design (RWD) has become one of the go-to solutions to provide content across a universe of different browsers and devices. Apps and websites have merged into one. In simple terms, a responsive web design uses "media queries" to figure out what resolution of device it's being served on. Flexible images and fluid grids then size correctly to fit the screen. From a QA view, how can we effectively test RWD. The Technology Association of Oregon (TAO) is excited to provide an opportunity to gather and discuss lessons learned and real life strategies to test these applications.

On Thursday, February 28th, the Quality Assurance Forum of the TAO is presenting a panel discussion on Responsive Web Design – Testing. Come join us for an engaging evening with your SQA peers centered on how to test Responsive Web.

Panelists:

Lyza Danger Gardner, co-founder, Cloud Four
Since co-founding Portland, Ore.-based mobile web start-up Cloud Four (http://www.cloudfour.com) in 2007, Lyza has tortured and thrilled herself with the intricate ins and outs of the bazillion devices and browsers now accessing the web globally. Lyza and co-founder Jason Grigsby are the authors of Head First Mobile Web.

Trent Peterson, co-founder, AppThwack -
Trent Peterson spent seven years at Intel designing system-automation solutions trusted to test products used by millions of customers with an emphasis on simplicity and user experience. He left in early 2012 to co-found AppThwack,a mobile app testing service that helps developers quickly and automatically test their apps on real devices.

Pawel Wojnarowicz, co-founder, AppThwack -
Pawel Wojnarowicz built an automation platform in his spare time that became the official solution for testing all wireless products at Intel. Pawel left after nine years to co-found AppThwack, a mobile app testing service that helps developers quickly and automatically test their apps on real devices.

A guide for the beginner: How to start up small with automation, and build up your portfolio! How to make your testing life easier!!

GUEST SPEAKER: Alan Ark, QA Manager at Compli

Alan Ark is the QA Manager at Compli, in Portland, Oregon. Alan has gained tremendous experience working for Unircu, Switchboard.com, and Thomson Financial – First Call. Mr. Ark has previously presented ‘Euro: An Automated Solution to Currency Conversion’ at Quality Week ’99, and ‘Collaborative Quality: One Company’s Recipe for Software Success’ at PNSQC 2008 and YES! You CAN Bring Test Automation to Your Company! at PNSQC 2011. At Compli, he is using Ruby to solve problems both large and small.

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are BRAND NEW, and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

at
Con-Way
2055 NW Savier, Portland, OR 97209
on
Wednesday April 17, 2013
5:30pm until 7:30pm

Where do tests come from? Pittsburg. No not really. Actually, we hope to discuss the various sources for tests in the different SDLC environments. We want everyone to share good practices for gleaning information needed for testing, including; rummaging through requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, code commentary, etc. Do your Product Managers write up test cases, DEV’s? Business Analysts? Tech facilitators? Remember Use Cases? Much of what we used to do, has become muddled and wrapped up in terminology and processes that no longer mean the same things they used to. Let’s talk it through and see if we can help each other in this murky water.

Mary Torres; our moderator for this event currently works at Viewpoint Construction Software as Lead QA Engineer. She a degree in Computer Science, has almost 17 years working in the software industry, and has worked in QA for that entire time. Her work experience includes QA management, automated testing, and functional testing. She is also a certified scrum master. Mary has worked on projects that have utilized traditional Waterfall and Agile/Scrum SDLC’s.

Details:
• Event is Free to the public
• Onsite parking (directions below)
• Light dinner and beverages will be served
• No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are NEW, and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

Producing high quality software, closely aligned with the constantly changing requirements of business stakeholders is more important than ever. Especially in an Agile development setting, every team member has to ensure that their work is of the highest quality – all the time. Testers can verify quality but not ensure it – proper QA procedures and a quality mindset are essential for high performance development teams.

During this event, your local Microsoft Developer Technology Specialist will provide you an inside look at Black Box Testing, show you the capabilities of Microsoft Test Manager, and address the Developer’s experience in quality enablement through white box testing. Furthermore, we’ll cover how quality is an accountability and addressable by the entire development organization.

You’ll also have an opportunity to learn the value of Build, Deploy, Test, and Lab Management from our ALM Partner, Crosslake Technologies, and gain exposure to enterprise cloud based cross platform application testing with Perfecto Mobile. We look forwarding to seeing you there!

Crowdsourcing has become widely acknowledged as a productivity solution across numerous industries. However, for companies incorporating crowdsourcing into existing business practices, specific issues must be addressed: What problem are we trying to solve? How do we control the process? How do we incentivize people to achieve our goals? Ultimately, the key to successfully employing a crowdsourcing model is to move beyond the realm of the "mob" to create an engaged, interactive community of diverse and skilled professionals. In the world of quality assurance, crowdsourcing has the potential to effectively solve emerging challenges and take your testing to new heights. Using real-world examples, uTest's John Montgomery explains how you can leverage the crowd to complement your internal systems, ensure systems work as intended under real-world conditions and effectively manage the scalability of efforts.

Interested in contributing to Puppet? Want to come hang out with fun people and do geeky things all day? Come to our Triage-A-Thon on Wednesday, October 2nd! You can participate virtually from anywhere in the world, or join us in person in our office in Portland, OR.

If you plan to attend, please register to help us plan for food and space!

Our goal is to review all the open tickets in the Puppet and Module projects to:
- Update and confirm that issues are still relevant
- Ensure tickets are in the right status and all the right information is present to fix the problem
- Close any invalid or no longer relevant tickets

We’ll assign blocks of tickets to every participant, explain what you need to do, and provide people on the ground to answer questions and help you make decisions. If you want a few more details about how you can help, you should read about the process we use to triage bugs.

Participate online worldwide: Virtually we’ll provide an IRC channel (#puppethack), IM, and rewards for people who triage tickets and get involved. The Triage-a-Thon will be happening online from 1am-5pm PDT so that our friends and employees outside the US can also participate, so drop in any time that works for you.

In Portland: Join us in person at our office in the Pearl! We'll provide breakfast, coffee, a delicious lunch, snacks and space in our office. Please bring a laptop computer with you. The in-office portion of the Triage-a-Thon starts at 9am, and runs all day, so you're welcome to drop in at any point.

The first 200 people who help for at least 2 hours will be sent a special edition Puppet Triage-a-Thon 2013 t-shirt, and we'll have additional prizes for top participants!

The key to successful adoption of any development methodology is a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each team member within that framework. As agile continues its rapid adoption, it’s essential to define the role of QA in Scrum as concretely as we’ve defined the other team roles.
Agile methodology gives QA an opportunity for broader and deeper involvement in the software development lifecycle, enabling us more effectively to ensure quality, not by finding defects, but by preventing the introduction of defects in the first place. Because quality starts with the user story, QA can drive defect prevention by asking key questions of product owners during requirements definition. We can ensure that comprehensive acceptance criteria are in place, to drive high quality development, testing, and story acceptance. We can also ask technical questions of developers. This results in more thoroughly defined user stories and prompts developers to consider additional issues, and avoid pitfalls in advance of implementation. Finally, to prevent the steady growth of technical debt, we must remind scrum masters to plan story points for fixing both known and unknown defects as part of every sprint. This presentation will teach you how to leverage Agile within your organization to see immediate improvements in the quality of your software delivery.

About the speaker...
Karen Ascheim Wysopal has been in software QA for over 20 years, in roles including tester, release manager, software engineer, test automation engineer, and 8 years as QA manager. She’s spent the past five years at Hewlett Packard, and currently heads Quality & PMO in the Software and Web Services organization, overseeing HPConnected.com, ePrintcenter.com, and related HP web-connected print technologies. She was a leader in the organization’s transition to Agile last year. Karen has presented at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference. Her professional passions are building high functioning innovative teams from the ground up, defining processes that encompass a holistic approach to quality, and speaking on best practices to foster improvements across the industry. She can’t seem to stop breaking software.

SQAUG Presents:
Building Automation on Business Concepts
–
Michael Cowan, SQE Viewpoint Construction SW
Topic: Building Automation on Business Concepts - A Real World Example

Come participate in an open discussion of advanced automation concepts using
real world examples from Viewpoints massive ERP Solution. There will be an
initial presentation on key concepts, followed by a code review
of real tests and
ending in an open discussion of how these concepts can be applied to your work

The presentation will focus on how Viewpoint has structured its automation
framework to focus on common business concepts and not a single technology.
We wi
ll show you how a single test can be written so it runs against a WinForm
UI, Web UI, REST API or even directly against a database.

This framework was implemented in C# (but I have implemented Java and Scala
versions at past companies) and was executing
test cases in less than 30 days.
Everything we discuss will be targeted at how to get something viable up and
running in less than 30 days

About Our Speaker: Michael Cowan
has over 20 years’ experience in the
software industry, and has held individual and management roles in both QA and
Development. His passions have always been automation, and he has been a lead
engineer on several successf
ul automation frameworks

Details:
. Event is Free to the public
· On site parking (directions below)
· Light Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served
· No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG
is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are BRAND NEW,
and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group
dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG
is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to
learn from each other through a series of interactive discuss
ions, engaged debates, training
presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to
expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers,
and take Software
Quality seriously.

Viral QA takes its name from the process of a virus infiltrating a host, adapting to its new environment and spreading itself throughout the system. It is an iterative approach to implementing structured QA into projects and teams that are ‘too busy to do it right’.

Viral QA is not meant to replace traditional QA, instead it enables the QA Team to continue driving structured QA forward even when the rest of the organization is struggling and overwhelmed.

About Our Speaker: Michael Cowan has over 20 years’ experience in the software industry, and has held individual and management roles in both QA and Development. His passions have always been automation, and he has been a lead engineer on several successful automation frameworks.

This presentation will describe barriers to superior customer service including waste, process issues, and cultural challenges in the workforce. We will also discuss the importance of the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle. Improvement methodologies covered include: Process Improvement, Problem Solving, and Daily Kata.

Annually, PNSQC provides a two-day technical program and a one-day workshop during our fall conference. PNSQC events draw participants from Universities and Corporations from around the world. Among the major participants are ADP, Boeing Computer Services, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Tektronix, Microsoft, Portland State University and Oregon State University.

The team needs to build a product. The team readily recognizes the testers’ need to work with the developers but the same team often doesn’t consider that the testers also need to work with the UX staff. Often the UX staff is tucked away in a different part of the office, working with multiple teams and yet rarely working directly with the testers. Why? How can testers review a product without a good understanding of the design? Testers need closer access to UX and UX would benefit from working directly with the testers. Karen highlights specific design areas where UX and testing pair well.

About Our Speaker: Karen N. Johnson is an independent software test consultant. Her client work is often centered on helping organizations at an enterprise level. In recent years, she has helped companies transitioning to Agile software development. While focused on software testing and predominantly working with the testers throughout an organization, Karen helps teams and organizations improve quality overall. Her professional activities include speaking at conferences both in the US and internationally. Karen is a contributing author to the book, Beautiful Testing by O’Reilly publishers. She is the co-founder of the WREST workshop, the Workshop for Regulated Software Testing. She has published numerous articles; she blogs and tweets about her experiences. Find her on Twitter as @karennjohnson (note the two n’s) and her website: http://www.karennicolejohnson.com

Join the Fun:
We are well into our third year, and going strong! Come celebrate with us, blow off some work-steam – and enjoy refreshments with your SQAUG compatriots! Whether you talk tech, look for work, or just enjoy the evening – it’s going to be great to see all of you again!! Join us!!

Details:

• We have a section reserved in the upstairs pool room at Touché Restaurant, just ask for the SQAUG group

• Appetizers will be served and pool tables can be reserved

• Come mingle with us! Event is FREE to the public and NO RSVP is required to attend

• There is a free parking lot and surrounding metered parking available

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are new, and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

at
Con-Way
2055 NW Savier, Portland, OR 97209
on
Wednesday January 14, 2014
5:30pm until 7:30pm

Event is FREE and Open to the Public

As more companies are moving toward agile development, there isn't a lot of knowledge on where QA fits into the development life cycle. The objective is to go over some common problems and some possible solutions that could be implemented for those riding the agile train.

About Our Speaker: Lloyd Bell is an 18 year veteran of software and hardware testing and development. Lloyd has experience in game design, voice acting, test management, has been a producer on multiple titles and has also started a 3rd party customer service and testing lab. He has recently worked with Microsoft on the Connected Experiences team and has led teams to help with the release of Microsoft’s day-one launch of the Windows 8 platform. Lloyd is currently working at CrowdCompass by Cvent as the Quality Engineering manager. CrowdCompass helps organizations make their conferences, meetings, conventions, and trade shows a lot more popular through the power of mobile event apps. They have developed thousands of apps for events of all sizes and industries each year. Lloyd has been a resident of Portland for the last 4 years.

Details:
• Event is Free to the public
• Onsite parking (directions below)
• Light Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served
• No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are BRAND NEW, and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

at
Con-Way
2055 NW Savier, Portland, OR 97209
on
Wednesday February 18, 2015
5:30pm until 7:30pm

Event is FREE and Open to the Public

Post-Mortems or Retrospective Meetings can be too little too late. Learn how to increase your ability to predict failures by 30% by holding a Pre-mortem meeting. Using the Pre-mortem strategy you can stop the failures from ever occurring.

About Our Speaker: Julie Green has been a QA Engineer for 10 years and has experience with Agile and Waterfall methodologies. In her research on Pre-mortems she has contacted the inventor, Gary Klein, and is in discussions with two of his colleagues who use Pre-mortem meetings in their work. She is currently looking for a group willing to try a Pre-mortem discussion. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Agenda:
5:30-6:00PM: Pizza and Networking
6:00-6:15PM: SQAUG Announcements
6:15-7:30PM: Presentation/Q&A

Details:
· Event is Free to the public
· Onsite parking (directions below)
· Light Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served
· No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are BRAND NEW, and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

at
Con-Way
2055 NW Savier, Portland, OR 97209
on
Wednesday March 18, 2015
5:30pm until 7:30pm

Event is FREE and Open to the Public

Non-Expert Automation Testing (NEAT) is an automation testing framework that enables non-experts to harness the power of data-driven, Selenium automation tests. The NEAT web portal simplifies and guides the creation of otherwise complex scripts through the use of an intuitive user interface that manages a web element object repository, test case input data, and test scripts. This approach is intended to enable test script automation to be completed in hours or days instead of weeks or months. The motivation behind NEAT is to equip business analysts, without automation expertise, with an intuitive tool to create and execute sophisticated, automated end-to-end testing scripts. This framework enables teams to increase automated test coverage and allows the highly skilled automation developers to focus on more complex automation testing needs of the organization.

About Our Speaker: Loren J. Brown is a Test Automation Architect and owner of Quantum Peg, Inc. He is currently teaming up with John Cvetko from TEK Associates to develop the DEAP testing tool. After obtaining a Bachelor’s in Computer Science at Portland State University, Loren worked for over two decades as a QA Engineer in various capacities. At Intel Corporation he spent a little over a dozen years in various product teams and Intel Labs as a QA Lead in various software projects including Video Conferencing, IP Telephony, TCP/IP Network Performance, and others. He spent over six years at Automatic Data Processing (ADP) as a QA Lead developing various test automation frameworks and harnesses, and multiple software lifecycle data visualization projects. When he carves out time for hobbies, Loren likes tinkering with microcontrollers and small electronics projects.
Agenda:
5:30-6:00PM: Pizza and Networking
6:00-6:15PM: SQAUG Announcements
6:15-7:30PM: Presentation/Q&A

Details:
· Event is Free to the public
· Onsite parking (directions below)
· Light Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served
· No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG is the Portland/Vancouver area’s leading Software Quality Assurance User Group. We are in our 3rd year and extend a warm welcome to everyone to participate in a group dedicated to growing the Software Quality Assurance profession.

SQAUG is a group of SQA professionals who come together in an open forum to learn from each other. We engage in discussions, debates, presentations, explore tools of the trade, network, and share job opportunity information. Our goals are to expand knowledge of Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers and take software quality seriously.

Rose City Software Quality Engineers (RCSQE)

Beaker is an acceptance level testing tool developed by Puppet Labs that supports both multi-platform and multi-virtualization techniques. Beaker tests combine basic Ruby with a custom DSL and are designed to be executed no matter the operating system or cloud provider selected at runtime. SUTs of a variety of platforms (linux, mac, windows, etc) are provisioned on a variety of virtualization systems and are then validated and configured. The result is a SUT abstraction that allows automators to write understandable and powerful scripts.

The Importance of Abstraction in Automation Projects
at
Con-Way
2055 NW Savier, Portland, OR 97209
on
Wednesday May 20, 2015
5:30pm until 7:30pm

Event is FREE and Open to the Public

The majority of automation projects fail, most within the first 6-12 months. Initially it’s easy to put something together that works for a small number of test cases, but as the application evolves, the troubleshooting/maintenance needs of the tests quickly overcome the ability of the team. Eventually (around 6-12 months) a new engineer takes over and restarts the automation effort in a new direction, often with the same issues.

This presentation will be focused on how to use the OOP concept of Abstraction to reduce the maintenance costs of automation and extend the life of your frameworks. Additional benefits will be discussed, like the ability to change the Automation Technology without rebuilding all your tests.

These concepts will work with 3rd party automation products like QTP as well as homegrown frameworks. You will get the most value from abstraction when its added at the beginning of the projects, but we will discuss how they can be leverages in larger, existing frameworks.
Level:
Intermediate. Knowledge of automation concepts along with some basic understanding of development practices will be assumed.

All code examples will be shown in C#, but the concepts will apply to any tool or language.

About our speaker: Michael Cowan is a Principal QA Engineer at Viewpoint Construction Software. He has over 20 years’ experience in the software industry, and has held individual and management roles in both QA and Development. His passions have always been automation, and he has been a lead engineer on several successful automation frameworks.

Details:
· Event is Free to the public
· Onsite parking (directions below)
· Light Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served
· No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are in our 3rd year and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

QA and The Role They Play in Team Dialogue
at
Con-Way
2055 NW Savier, Portland, OR 97209
on
Wednesday June 17, 2015
5:30pm until 7:30pm

Event is FREE and Open to the Public

Dialogue is a contraction from the Greek words for through and words. It suggests an activity aimed at eliciting meaning…

The Greeks introduced the idea that individuals are not intelligent on their own, that it's only by reasoning together that they are able to uncover the truth for themselves. …By questioning and probing each other, carefully dissecting and analyzing ideas, finding the inconsistencies, never attacking or insulting but always searching for what they can accept between them, they can gradually attain deeper understanding and insight.

The role of QA is often seen as one that only reports negatively on the work of others: “…found a bug with your code”; “…the way you designed this isn’t good for the end user”; “…You never include requirements in your stories…and when you do, they lack sufficient details.”

The importance of True Dialogue is that it allows positive reactions and outcomes, from negative input…when done well, the benefits can be extraordinary!

About our speaker: Joe Famme is a Quality Minded individual, who’s been helping to improve the quality of his teams, and the software they work on, for over 20 years. He started in phone support with WordPerfect, in the early nineties. After about a year and a half of that…and the release of Windows 3.0…he discovered the world of QA, and has never looked back.

Besides WordPerfect, Joe’s also worked for internationally known companies Novell, Corel, Intel, and Sage.

Joe’s been working in the Portland Tech Community since 1996. He’s been part of several strong Oregon Companies and several startup companies, .com’s & .bomb’s. And, Joe’s been part of the SQAUG organization since before it became a public group.

In all of his years of being part of the Quality Assurance field, he has found that the quest for the mastery of effective communication and true dialogue has been a key element to success. And, he hopes that some of the dialogue during his presentation provides at least one insight for all attendees to take back to their teams.

Details:
· Event is Free to the public
· Onsite parking (directions below)
· Light Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served
· No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are in our 3rd year and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

QA and Poetry - how these two disciplines are surprisingly related at Con-Way 2055 NW Savier, Portland, OR 97209 on Wednesday October 21, 2015 5:30pm until 7:30pm
Event is FREE and Open to the Public

This month, we are excited to welcome Scott Poole for a talk on how writing a poem is similar to QA. You have to anticipate the pitfalls an audience and a user might fall into. To illustrate this, Scott will read several humorous poems that reflect on this QA type experience. He will discuss about how both disciplines have influenced each other and the benefits gained. Scott is also one of the keynote speakers for the PNSQC’s October events and will be tailoring his presentation specifically for SQAUG!

About our speaker: Scott Poole is most well known as the “House Poet” on the weekly Live Wire! public radio variety show, taped in Portland and broadcast nationally by Public Radio International. However, he is also a software developer. Currently, he’s the Senior Web Developer for Columbia United Providers in Vancouver, WA. He’s been writing code for 9 years and poetry for 25. He is the author of three books of poetry, The Cheap Seats, Hiding from Salesmen and, most recently, The Sliding Glass Door.

Details:
• Event is Free to the public
• Onsite parking (directions below)
• Light Hors d'oeuvres and beverages will be served
• No RSVP is required to attend

SQAUG is Portland/Vancouver area’s only Software Quality Assurance User Group! We are in our 3rd year and would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who would like to participate in a user group dedicated to growing the Quality Assurance field.

SQAUG is made up of a group of SQA professionals who have banded together in an open forum to learn from each other through a series of interactive discussions, engaged debates, training presentations, exploring tools, and general networking and sharing of job opportunities. Our goals are to expand knowledge about Software Quality to all professionals who are passionate about their careers, and take Software Quality seriously.

A two-day technical program and one day of workshops for software quality engineers, testers, managers, consultants, software developers, Agilists and non-Agilist.

A featured speaker is author, consultant and “Pragmatic Manager” Johanna Rothman of the Rothman Consulting Group, Inc. She will lead a workshop on using Agile + Lean to deliver business value every day..

PNSQC events draw participants from Universities and Corporations from around the world. Among the major participants are ADP, Boeing Computer Services, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Tektronix, Microsoft, Portland State University and Oregon State University.

PNSQC’s mission is to enable knowledge exchange to produce higher quality software. We seek to increase the awareness of the importance of software quality. As a non-profit corporation, we seek to promote software quality by providing education and opportunities for information exchange within the software community. PNSQC provides opportunities to demonstrate, teach and exchange ideas on both proven and leading edge software quality practices.

You’re just getting started, but where exactly do you start? Should you freelance or head for corporate cover? How soon should you qualify your experience as, well, experience? How much advice should you take from so-called mentors? Is it possible to love too many things at once? Why hasn’t school made you the programming wizard you’d hoped to become?

Admit it: you’re a little intrigued. I’m going to tell you my story—the bumps and scrapes and occasional victories experienced over my nearly twenty years as a web developer. I’ve learned a few things that can hopefully help you succeed on your new self-guided journey.

Open Source Bridge is in just a few weeks — June 20-23.
Come find out about volunteering positions, including Session Monitor, Hacker Lounge volunteer, Logistics assistant, Party volunteer, and more!
Working just 8 hours (spread over 4 days of conference and load-in day) gets you a free ticket.

Open source Bridge is the best regional open source tech conference around! A language-agnostic conference created by developers, designers, hardware hackers, and community leaders for the greater tech industry, OSBridge focuses on the intersection of activism, tech, and culture.
Students and those looking for internships and work are always welcome — we have a job board on-site to connect you with companies looking to fill positions.

Looking to engage or recruit donors, volunteers, ambassadors, or community partners in person? Want tips on how to make things run more smoothly? Get potential advocates excited to come to your community event.

Join us as Melissa Chavez (core organizer of many nonprofit events over the years, including tech conferences Open Source Bridge, PNSQC, PyDX, and Portland VegFest) shares tools, and how to plan community events.

Agilists from across the Pacific Northwest will converge at the Nike World Headquarters for a career changing day. This is a one-day conference with 3 keynote speakers (Richard Sheridan, best-selling author of Joy Inc., Gene Kim, founder and CTO of Tripwire, and Mamie Jones, SVP of Product Development at Intuit) as well as 20 workshops on Leadership, Product, Technical Enablement, Leadership, Innovation, Agility and much more.

Use this promo code, MeetAC17 for a 10% discount on registration if you register by 8/23/2017!

Meet other testers, chat about challenges and successes, share stories, and make new friends. We'll spend time getting input on new topics for meetup talks or presenters and other events that we can do to help support each other.